STILL HAVEN’T FOUND WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR?

Logistics and contagion (revisited)

In early November I wrote about the need for a promotional push to get the process going. We’re now midway through that push and reaching perhaps the most critical stage – converting the momentum to money. Whilst I don’t want to rule out crowdsourcing for this 72, the reality is that it won’t touch the sides of what we need to do the project on the full scale. Remember what I mentioned last week; if we’re doing this at all, we’re going to have to do it right. So I’ll be in Berlin fishing for the business.

However, I’ll also be giving a presentation at Konrad Wolf Film School in Potsdam whilst there, as part of a symposium on film. I’m super excited because we’re also looking at some of the awesome work they do there. I’ll post more on this later in the week! We’ve also got our party on Friday, which will be a great chance to see some friends, old and new. I’m at Talent Campus this year, so I have dinners at the British Embassy, masterclasses and presentations all to look forward to as well.

When you have to go through all this stuff just to get to the set, it becomes immediately apparent that a true 72 hour film is an impossibility. We’ve become so fixed in this mode of working on projects that the cost of time in development is almost as expensive as the ‘expensive’ period of production. Of course, not many are traditionally paid for all of these development stages of production, which means most producers are out of pocket before the shooting even begins, and they are looking to reconcile that cost once the budget comes in, which is completely understandable. When the budget doesn’t come in, and the project goes down without realisation, the producer tends to be skint.

The good news is that we’re generously supported in this period by a research grant that covers the search for further investment, as long as I’m writing the whole process up and disseminating it. Which is what you’re reading right now. When you alert more people to the 72 project you are increasing the chances for us to leverage more money, as we have a demonstrable audience. I’m talking about the actual ‘you’, not a hypothetical ‘you’. I need you to talk to someone about this project today. It will be considered your good deed for the day! In actual fact, the promotional push is doing incredibly well and in January we had the most web traffic on the site since we began, so please help us grow this 🙂